It’s good to see such high standards of historical literacy maintained in our nation’s capital.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, speaking on the House floor: “Maybe I should offer a good thanks to the distinguished members of the majority, the Republicans, my chairman and others, for giving us an opportunity to have a deliberative constitutional discussion that reinforces the sanctity of this nation and how well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a Constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not.”

The charitable thing to do would be to chalk this up to a verbal slip and assume she had the founding of Jamestown somewhere in the back of her mind. But since this is the same person who thought Vietnam was still divided in 2010, and who once asked someone from NASA if the Mars Rover had taken a picture of Neil Armstrong’s flag, I’m not optimistic.